Braves coaching changes speak to club’s direction, urgency for 2026
The Braves have ended up in an unexpected place after hiring Walt Weiss to be the club’s new manager.
From the previous staff, bench coach Eddie Perez and hitting coach Tim Hyers are expected to continue with the coaching staff — but there have been a series of significant changes otherwise.
To wit, Weiss’ staff will have a new pitching coach (Jeremy Hefner), a third base coach (Tony Mansolino), a new first base coach (Antoan Richardson) and a new bullpen coach (J.P. Martinez).
It’s not conventional because Weiss, of course, was a bench coach for manager Brian Snitker for the past eight seasons.
The assumption would be that, if Weiss didn’t retain the entire staff — coaches he had worked alongside, befriended and won with — then surely the team would retain key members of the coaching staff.
But that’s not how it has worked out.
Another interesting facet of the hires — the four have not worked with Weiss or Alex Anthopoulos or for the Braves, something else that goes against the grain. And one more — the four are all between 39 and 43 years old.
Three of the coaches they’re replacing — pitching coach Rick Kranitz, third base coach Fredi González and first base coach Tom Goodwin — are 67, 61 and 57, respectively.
It flies in the face of the immediate reaction to Weiss’ hire when it was announced this past week, that in hiring the 61-year-old Weiss, the Braves were getting a reboot of the Snitker tenure and missed the chance for an infusion of youth and new ideas.
Instead, the Braves have indeed made a rather significant pivot.
Not that age or continuity is implicitly a minus. But Anthopoulos and Weiss’ willingness to shake up the staff — particularly not retaining Kranitz, a respected and successful pitching guru who had been on Snitker’s staff since 2019 — speaks to an urgency to return the club to its winning ways after a disastrous 2025 season that ended the team’s eight-year streak of postseason appearances.
As Weiss said at his introductory news conference, “The standards are high, the expectations are high and that’s a good thing.”
Anthopoulos: “We expect to be in the playoffs year in and year out.”
After last offseason, when the Braves were fairly quiet — the signing of left fielder Jurickson Profar was the only significant player addition, though they did replace longtime hitting coach Kevin Seitzer with Hyers — and then failed to match the payroll of the 2024 season, it’s an encouraging start to the offseason.
So was chairman Terry McGuirk saying on a Braves Holdings earnings call Wednesday that “we are a win-now team,” that the aim to be in the top 5 in team payroll “is a place that I want to get to” and that he thought the franchise is capable of it. (The Braves payroll was ninth this past season in MLB, according to Spotrac.)
It would have been more reassuring for Braves fans if McGuirk put himself farther on the ledge with the spending plans. If we’re going to parse, McGuirk said he wanted to get to a point where the Braves can have a goal of being in the top 5.
It’s like a boyfriend telling his girlfriend, “I think I want to have a goal of planning on deciding to propose to you.”
Not quite getting down on one knee, but it’s something. It at least is an indicator of the Braves’ plans to be aggressive in free agency and the trade market and to increase payroll. While it wasn’t an ironclad promise, McGuirk also didn’t have to say anything about it in the first place.
And another thing about the series of coaching hires. They probably wouldn’t have happened had Anthopoulos hired Weiss immediately after Snitker’s retirement was announced.
If Anthopoulos made anything clear about his search process, it was that background work was going to be critical. He was intent on learning as much as he could about candidates, far more than he could glean from an interview.
And given the range of candidates — Anthopoulos only allowed that there were “a lot” — that probably meant hundreds of phone calls to a variety of people across the industry.
And, in so doing, it would be a surprise if Anthopoulos hadn’t also used those calls to learn more about potential assistant coaches — their ability, character, potential interest in the Braves, etc.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that Anthopoulos went in with the intent to replace Kranitz or the other departed coaches, but it certainly opened the door to improve the staff for Weiss.
If Anthopoulos had hired Weiss immediately, trusting that what he knew already about Weiss was sufficient and that there was no need to look into other candidates, the background calls would not have been made.
In short, from one perspective, the length of the search might be a little perplexing given the outcome. From another, for Anthopoulos to have used the managerial search as an opportunity to fish around and see what else he could come up with makes all the sense in the world.
The changes could be difference making. Hefner is experienced and highly regarded. It says a lot about his work that he served three different managers in his tenure (2020-25) and was retained through each change. Over his six seasons, the Mets’ ERA (4.02) was sixth lowest in MLB during that span.
Last year, the Mets led the majors in stolen-base percentage (89.1%) with Richardson, the team’s baserunning instructor. Superstar Juan Soto stole 38 bases (in 42 attempts), shattering his previous career high of 12. Outfielder Brandon Nimmo was 28-for-29 over the past two seasons after stealing a total of six in his previous two seasons.
There are holes to address, starting with shortstop. But, after a dreadful 2025, the offseason has begun encouragingly.
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
